Identity Protection News

Coming to store near you soon – American Apparel rolls out in-store RFID

Giant US clothing company American Apparel has been testing using RFID tags in-store to help with improving inventory accuracy and on-shelf availability. Imagine In-store RFID being used a step further when soon the tags embedded into your clothes or footwear let the store know what you have already purchased and start to serve you up ads / suggestions on what to buy next based on your previous purchases. Look out because it’s coming very fast to a store near you soon.

After an extensive trial, they will be rolling this technology out across all US stores.

“The Senitron solution delivers on the dream of hands-free, full-time inventory visibility,” “We get accuracy levels that meet or exceed handheld readers, in real-time and with less work.

Stacey Shulman, CTO of American Apparel.

But the scary thing for us as consumers is the possibilities that this technology could release, in a further statement

If you really want to see what the possibilities are and how corporations really want to use this technology then you only have to read Spychips book written by privacy evangelist Katherine Albrecht .

The system American Apparel is rolling out uses 12 – 15 uses fixed RFID antennas mounted among a store’s ceiling track lights.

Imagine in the ‘possibilities’ area, that these readers know what you have purchased in the past, based on chips in your clothing or perhaps these readers could be used to read every credit card in your wallet. The technology is already there to do so.

We don’t mean to be alarmist but this is how the technology will encroach even further into our lives, first it gets implemented as a ‘stock & inventory’ tool which no doubt is a useful tool, then it will be used as a marketing tool, think behavioural targeting in the online space now in the real world.